Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta, the company that runs Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, is to remove fact-checking from all its services.

In a video message, he said the recent US elections felt to him like a cultural tipping point prioritising free speech.

Meanwhile, Apple has refused to withdraw a new artificial intelligence feature which has generated inaccurate news alerts.

More on that in a moment, but first, more on Meta from Sarah Smith in Washington.

With a whole new team about to take charge in Washington, and Elon Musk, owner of the social media platform X, enjoying boys' nights out with his new best friend Donald Trump, the battle's on to stay on the right side of the president-elect.

Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg, who controls Facebook, Instagram and threads, has a much trickier relationship with Mr Trump, having banned him from Facebook after the January 6th riots four years ago.

Stolen by the fake news media, that's what they've done and what they're doing.

Now he's entirely rewriting his content moderation practices, ending the fact-checking that prevents the spread of misinformation.

He says his rules were too restrictive.

We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship.

The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.

So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms.

Would you like to apologize for what you've done to these good people?

Mark Zuckerberg came under heavy political criticism less than a year ago for not restricting content that allowed online child exploitation.

He publicly apologized to the families affected.

Now the martial arts fan is fighting by different rules, saying political bias had infected his fact-checking and now's the time for more of an information free-for-all.

Elon Musk radically changed the rules and the vibe at X since he bought what was then called Twitter.

And Donald Trump believes that helped him to get elected.

Now he's about to take charge, others are bending their rules to suit him too.

It's notable that Mark Zuckerberg said that these rule changes will apply for now only in America and that he's got no plans to introduce them into Europe or the rest of the world.

And in fact, Donald Trump himself has just been giving a news conference and he was asked there if he thinks that Meta are introducing these changes in response to his threats toward the company and he said probably.

Now it was actually a very wide-ranging news conference with a lot of pretty dramatic statements, a taste I think of what's to come when he takes over as president in less than two weeks' time now.

I'll run you through some of the headlines of what he was saying.

He threatened that he would introduce really high tariffs against Denmark if the country refuses to give up control of Greenland, which is a territory that Donald Trump wants the United States to control.

And he even refused to rule out the use of force to take over Greenland and or the Panama Canal if that's what's necessary to obtain US control of those territories.

And he was also talking in that press conference about renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

Have a listen to this and it'll give you a flavor of what he was talking about.

And we're going to be announcing a future date pretty soon.

We're going to change because we do most of the work there and it's ours.

We're going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

He also mentioned a couple of very serious foreign policy issues.

He talked about wanting NATO countries to contribute 5% of their budgets in defence if they're going to be NATO members instead of the 2% which the current rules currently stipulate.

And he also said about the hostages, the Hamas held hostages in Gaza, that all hell will break loose if they are not released before he takes office in about two weeks' time.

He didn't explain what that would be, but said it would be bad for Hamas and bad for everybody.

All right.

Sarah, thank you.

Sarah Smith there, our North America editor live in Washington.